The way to lose weight for people who love food too much and don’t like dieting one little bit.

Hello!

If you love food as much as I do you might be interested in this. It’s my attempt to share how I’ve lost four and a half stone, and kept it off, without giving up all the food I love.

I’m not promising you’ll get the same results as me (you’re unlikely to be a seventeen stone ad-man from Crouch End with an addiction to gin and warm, smoked almonds). But if you recognise something in what I’m talking about then I’ll say that ‘if it’s worked for me it’ll work for you too’.

3 stone in three months

4 stone in 18 months

Is the Diet Groove right for you?

YES

NO

The Diet Groove is for you if you love food; good, healthy, lovely food. And terribly bad, unhealthy, lovey food too. If you love burgers, with lots of mayo. And bangers and mash. And bacon butties. And fish and chips. And spaghetti alla vongole. And, and, and...

It’s also for you if you’ve tried dieting and failed. And hated it. And hated every single diet you’ve ever tried. And failed at them all.

It’s especially for you if you want to lose weight forever. If you are sick of the depressing cycle of dieting and just getting heavier.

And if you’ve got no willpower, so much the better.

It’s not for you if you’re looking for a quick fix, nor on the other hand, if you’re looking for a new health regime you can believe in, like some kind of religion. This is not about thriving and glowing and getting radical about your body.

It’s also not for you if you’ve got the willpower to believe in a diet idea. Diets work by giving people sets of rules to follow (the stricter the rules; the shorter they tend to last). So if you’ve got the willpower to follow rules easily, you don’t need me.

The challenge you're facing

No matter how well we set off on our path, paved with good intentions, we soon stumble. The difficulty comes as the days of restraint begin to drag. You watch everyone else eat, drink and be merry and can’t believe that you are such an outcast.

It is not right. You rebel. “It’s not fair!!”

And, of course, it isn’t fair. That’s the problem with dieting. You are facing massive obstacles that are far from fair.

There are three of them.

1. Fat Magnet

The first is that you have a body that loves being fat. We are Fat Magnets. More than most other animals, we are evolutionarily designed to store fat. That means every time we fall for the advertising we are punished heavily. And every time we get heavier.

2. Traybake Times

Second, you live in a terrible time for being slim. These are Traybake Times and you have the weight of a massive food industry and its advertising machine setting out to tempt you on every side.

Typical diets don’t tend to acknowledge this – they pretend that if you can make the healthy food seem nice enough then it’ll win. Have you tried that? How long did it last?

3. Amy Brains.

The third is that we are our own worst enemy. Our evolutionary brain acts to undermine our thoughtful selves at every decision. This is our Amy Brain. And it wins every time. And it loves muffins.

A bit more about me

Will Penrose is not a nutritionist.

I’m an ad man. I’ve worked in advertising since the 1980s, selling everything from crisps to cars. For six years I ran my own research business, specialising in consumer behaviour and motivation. That’s what I know about. Getting people to do stuff.

And five years ago I was fat. Officially obese. I’d spent the last thirty years sitting in an office, doing all the exercise of a scatter cushion and eating (and drinking) well - by ‘well’ I mean ‘a lot’. Let's face it when I first started cooking for my girlfriend, now my beautiful wife of twenty years, we thought that a big bowl of spaghetti carbonara was a healthy supper. Everybody did back then.